SUNDAY UPDATE: THE ENIGMA THAT IS GOLD

 

“Gold trading … what’s the problem!!?”

There is a difference in how gold is traded versus every other “so called” market

on the MT4 or MT5 … markets in traditional FX in the spot market are dominated

by scumbag banks, usually BFF with the appropriate central bank, and are

therefore the main FX LP’s [Liquidity Providers]… CFD’s in everything else are

usually dominated by HFT’s [High Frequency Trading firms], although banks can

be LP’s here but usually aren’t … make no mistake, they can fill your order

anywhere they want, and there isn’t a “Hoover Dam” thing you can do about it

… liquidity providers will NEVER change a fill price … EVER … that would be

admitting guilt that their system is crooked … instead, the system is set up for

the middleman brokerage house to determine whether or not to compensate you

for shit fills based on how big a volume you do … the banks & HFT’s want

nothing to do with you.

What makes spot gold different for trading  is that it’s governed and strictly

administered by the LBMA [London bullion Market Association] … what that

means is that gold LP’s will only be LBMA member firms … you won’t see

XAUUSD [the spot LBMA symbol for gold] on any platform where others are

allowed to make a market … as such, there’s a general consensus day-to-day

RE bid / offer spreads … while they may be different by a few pennies, generally

speaking you stand less of a chance of getting ripped on an order fill in gold than

you do in FX or something like any of the “Stock Bellies” [world indices]

… therefore, there’s a consistency other markets lack … sure, on news, gold

can/does go bat shit crazy [BSC], just like every other market, but the general

“scumbaggery & fuckery” that goes on in other markets is LARGER than in gold

… and this is born out of personal experience as well.

My guess is, offshore brokerage houses generally avoid doing business and

having orders filled with U.S. domiciled LBMA firms … e.g., JPM, Citibank, Bank

of America, and there are others as well … the reason is simple … it might mean

scrutiny from U.S. regulators … better to have NON U.S. LBMA firms do the

clearing for the brokerage house, with firms that have nothing to do with the U.S.

and are from every other civilized country in the world [e.g., Switzerland,

Germany, etc.] … and as we all should know, CFD’s aren’t allowed to be offered

to U.S. citizens or residents by financial firms, cuz they got outlawed when

Preezy Empty Suit was in charge … this was Obama’s bone to the CME in

Chicago back in 2010 … out of this legislation came the infamous FATCA

[Financial Account Tax compliance Act], and is one of the main reasons pretty

much ALL offshore brokerage houses that accept fiat [U.S. dollars] via bank wire

transfer or debit/credit cards to fund trading accounts WILL NOT OPEN AN

ACCOUNT FOR ANY U.S. CITIZEN OR RESIDENT … it’s not worth having to

comply with idiotic U.S. bullshit, so they simply exclude you … enter crypto,

specifically Bitcoin and stablecoins like Tether, and now anybody can open a

trading account with just an email address … of course, many still publicly

state officially that no U.S. people can open accounts via their websites, but

that’s a big fat lie … use private, anonymous, and secure email, along with a

decent VPN, and you can be anybody you want to be from any country you

want … nobody cares, they just want the biz! … send in some crypto for deposit

and within minutes your account is funded and you’re trading … and in that

offering of markets, you’ll see XAUUSD.

Granted, there may be a very slight difference between market makers and/or LP’s

at the LBMA when it comes to the spread … a few pennies per Oz. … overall, that

won’t matter with the way gold moves for a spec trader, but if you’re the dealer

doing millions of OZ., and perhaps tens of thousands of trades a day, it matters

greatly.

I’m still in the slow burn stage from Friday’s trade … 1) I got to spend time

showing the receipts to a brokerage house that doesn’t give two rat fucks about

fills on SP500 orders … that eats up time … 2) meanwhile, gold is skyrocketing,

giving off great version 2 algorithm buy signals that I’m not only NOT seeing, but

missing cuz I’m dealing with Idiots & Dopes at Coinexx … and 3) not the least of

which I’m sitting here at trader central HQ, here in the Caribbean, and the Mrs. &

Miss Gimpy are getting rich from being long gold, while I’m in the midst of

brokerage house bullshit up to my eyeballs … pretty soon, I’m gonna be the one

asking for an allowance from the Mrs.!

I so wanted the “Spoos” CFD to be competitive with futures … but the second you

raise your lot volume levels, here they come to mug, rob, rape, and then shoot you

in the head and leave you for dead … name the market from FX to “Stock Bellies”,

and in every single case I’ve been lied to at every turn, and the slippage is getting

worse not better … only in gold have we been fairly treated, and that’s cuz of the

uniformity of the spread versus LBMA members … there’s no enigma to gold any

longer!

Quite frankly, with the way 2023 has started out in gold, which to some extent has

surprised me with its instant VIX ramp right out of the new year gate, going

forward in the new year I don’t see VIX going significantly lower anytime soon

… patches of sloppy VIX maybe, but given central bank demand, inflation out of

control everywhere, and governments going full retard QE soon cuz of slowing

economies, I don’t see any of that translating into slower trading action

… especially given the enormous appetite for gold by the Ruskies, Chicoms, and

India, to name just 3 … even countries like Ghana & Nigeria are buying gold

… the game plan for the Ruskies & ChiComs remains the same … defeat the West

by converting their respective fiat currencies convertible into gold bullion, and

watch the U.S. crumble into oblivion towards Venezuela … and when OPEC finally

gets around to pricing oil in Yuan, the gig is up for the U.S. … watch what

happens to gold then.

Over these past weeks and months, I have attempted to trade other markets that

appear on the surface to have an advantage over gold from a trade perspective

… and in every case, it’s an illusion of LP deception … even crude oil has

disappointed … phantom or too high spread quotes, hidden slippage, and if that’s

not enough from the trade logistics side of the equation, totally inconsistent VIX

manufactured by central banks for manipulation … well, no more of that! … I’m

not gonna go as far as to say I’m never gonna trade other markets, cuz things do

change, and the trading biz is always rife with change … but it’s gonna take a

Herculean effort to get me out of gold and into something else … 2023 needs to be

a year of tremendous profits, and the one market that’s gonna get us there is gold

… turn the machines on Mortimer, it’s time to make hay!

Directly below, the 20 Day Range MA’s for selected markets.

click on table to enlarge

… OUTTA HERE … “The future’s so bright I need 2 pairs of sunglasses 😎😎,

and my own Brinks armored truck” 💓!! … Onward & Upward!! 

-vegas

SUNDAY UPDATE: THE BIG “MAYBE” PIVOT THIS WEEK

“The financial system is burning down!!”

There have surely been enough hints … the BOJ interventions, the Mary Daly

“wink wink, nod nod” maybe we could tighten “too much”, and Mr. Insider FED

himself at the WSJ giving the ultimate blessing by passing on the rumor … add to

that the abundance of horrible economic news coming out of Biden’s ‘Murica, and

bad news is good news once again in the upside down world of “Stonks” and

“Stock Bellies” … nothing says higher stock prices more than disastrous

economic and/or geopolitical news … “Supervolcano Yellowstone blows … 70%

of the U.S. is under 50 feet of volcanic ash … millions killed … stocks hit all time

highs on hopes the FED cuts interest rates! … [sub headline: women and

minorities hit hardest by racy-ist volcano.]”

And so maybe we get the “open secret” PIVOT [or pause] from the FED … we’ll

see at 2 PM EST on Wednesday … quite frankly, it doesn’t square with slaying

inflation like they say they want to do … political pressure no doubt coming from

the senile, incompetent, & corrupt “Taliban Joe”, but I doubt anybody listens to

this Doofus, and I can’t see anything but “buy the rumor, sell the fact” when the

dust clears for “Stock Bellies” … but when money goes FOMO, anything can

happen.

I have said this a million times, but it bears repeating … if the spread is right and

conditions are volatile enough, the market to concentrate in is crude oil … the

problem at Turnkey always has been the thieving HFT LP or group of HFT LP’S

they use, where one second the bid/ask spread can be 2 or 3 cents, and then blink

your eyes and it goes to 7 cents or some such shit … they use the “variable

spread concept” as plausible deniability in their pricing, always saying the same

thing when they screw an order … “DUH!, market conditions, DUH!”, which is

absolute horseshit … it simply gives them the excuse for slippage … and what

makes it particularly egregious, is the fact that their CFD is an average of front

month, second futures month, AND spot WTI cash, so you never know if the price

they quote is legit or bullshit … AND by pricing this way, they LESSEN overall VIX

in oil, while at the same time fucking everybody with slippage to boot … about

15% of the time during the New York session, you can’t trade it unless you totally

love giving money away for nothing … during the rest of the day, it’s about a

50/50 crap shoot whether or not pricing is fair or bullshit … but for the PAMM, it’s

all we got so I have to live with it.

What makes the energy complex [oil + Natty Gas] compelling to trade, given the

right conditions, is 1) good VIX, and 2) most of the time the m1 charts short term

“trend purer” than anything “Stock Bellies” or FX can offer, meaning fewer spikes

from Hell both up & down … not to say both oil and gas don’t have their bat shit

crazy [BSC] moments, cuz they do like ALL MARKETS, but from a trading

perspective, either scalping / day trading, you’re gonna get consistently better

moves from energy, and you’re gonna get more of them … and for those

wondering, I’m not sitting on my ass pouting cuz Turnkey sucks some of the time

in oil … I’m actively courting some other houses to specifically AND

EXCLUSIVELY trade oil in some format … in other words, I would only trade crude

oil … dunno yet how this is gonna shake out, but the “copy trade” format, if I can

CONSISTENTLY get the conditions I demand, might be a solution … we’ll see in

the days / weeks ahead … I’m talkin’ a “razor thin” cost to trade [spread + any

commissions] over futures, and the CFD is price based on the front month futures,

NOT an average like Turnkey uses.

And just in case nobody reading the blog has noticed, the CME feeling pressure

from the offshore community in oil CFD’s, has their own “MICRO” WTI FUTURES

CONTRACT, where a 1 lot volume is 100 barrels instead of the regular futures

contract size of 1,000 barrels … volume and open interest is directly below, along

with the link to the CME micro oil data.

click on histogram to enlarge

https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/energy/crude-oil/micro-wti-crude-oil.

volume.html

Of course, unless you’re nuts, there’s no way you’d want to trade futures over a

good CFD … for most of the world, futures profits are taxable, but CFD’s are not

cuz they are considered “bets” on price with the LP, so they fall under gambling

… in the U.S. all brokerage houses will require FULL KYC with documentation,

and all profits / losses from trading at the end of the year are reported to the U.S.

IRS via a 1099 … offshore brokerage houses report NADA TO NOBODY cuz there

is no legal requirement to do so in the jurisdiction they are domiciled … add to

that there isn’t any KYC whatsoever cuz deposits / withdrawals are done

exclusively in crypto [e.g., Bitcoin, or some of the stablecoins], even though

once deposited you can have the house switch to dollars … I’m not suggesting

anything to anybody here via “opinion”, I’M JUST STATING FACTS … So, a good

crude oil CFD that is only fractionally off futures prices is the way to go.

Directly below is this weeks 20 Day Range MA’s for selected pairs.

click on table to enlarge

Over the last month, crude has lost about 30 cents per barrel, per the 20 Day

Range MA in the New York session … it’s still more than adequate, and we haven’t

even hit winter yet … look for oil to explode once the ChiComs come out of COVID

restrictions [if they ever do], and ramp back up their economy … in the U.S.,

supplies are very tight with diesel especially inventoried low … last I read, only

28 days of supply on the East Coast, so distillate supply [diesel & gas] is

propping up crude’s price … things can certainly change, but for now OPEC+ is

telling Biden to “pound sand”, and the oil market is a potential time bomb ready

to go off … let’s hope here near term, Turnkey can keep their shit together so

we can participate … onto FED Lounge Lizard week! 

… OUTTA HERE … “The future’s so bright I need 2 pairs of  sunglasses 😎😎,

and my own Brinks armored truck” 💓!! … Onward & Upward!!

-vegas

 

SUNDAY UPDATE: LAST WEEK PROVIDED ALL THE PROOF

“Market manipulation of the “Spoos” is ALL that matters!”

How many tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars got thrown down the rat hole

by the “Plunge Protection Team” [PPT] last week artificially supporting the U.S.

stock market from a crash? … can you say “FED policy error?” … every single

day they were in the U.S. market, and for who and for what purpose? … it sure as

hell ain’t for you & me … it’s for global Elitists, like Buffet, Gates, Bezos, etc., with

the primary purpose to prop up the corporate buybacks that make Boards of

Directors “uber rich” via stock options … by flooding the financial system with

oceans of newly printed “Benji’s”, the FED manipulates interest rates so the

Ponzi scheme can continue and “zombie” companies & financial institutions like

Squid, JPM to name a few, can continue to cut their public stock float, thus

insuring rising EPS without doing a “Hoover Dam” thing … and then the circle of

corruption continues when said banks & companies kick some of it back into

political PAC’s, so that Assclowns like “Taliban Joe” got free money to throw

around … “so somebody tell me, what does J.P. Morgan or Vampire Squid

PRODUCE in the U.S., besides financial bullshit that grows higher every frickin’

year? … what benefit do they add to society? … not a fucking thing is what they

add, and bloodsucker banks like these are a big part of the problem … they are

nothing but parasites.

This in a nutshell is what’s VERY WRONG with the U.S. financial system

… fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, this shell game is

about ready to run into some serious math problems … fact is, this endless

borrowing & spending of trillions is gonna end in disaster, and by my back of the

envelope math, there’s no way it can continue for more than about 5 years at

present pace … we’re already at the point where you could CONFISCATE the

entire fortune of ALL billionaires, and it wouldn’t run the U.S. Banana Republic

machine for more than about a week! … what’s gonna end it? … IMHO, it’s when

both the ChiComs & Ruskies back their respective currencies with gold, AND

crude oil is priced in something other than dollars … when this happens, IT’S

O.V.E.R., and the U.S. becomes Venezuela overnight.

From a trading perspective, I’ve tried on numerous occasions to trade “Stock

Bellies” at Turnkey for the PAMM, to take advantage of the “88/6/6” paradigm,

but sadly thieving “market makers” parading as “liquidity providers'' [LP’s]

always show up with 1) “bait & switch” bid/offer spreads, 2) horrendous slippage

with off market fills that are pure bullshit, or 3) BOTH … thieves can’t help

themselves, they are who they are … what frosts my cupcake is that Turnkey

NEVER does anything about it, thus telling me by default they receive part of the

“rip off” as some kind of brokerage house rebate from the bank or HFT … not

illegal in most, if not all, offshore jurisdictions, but sleazy as hell IMHO … but

as I’ve said a million times, they do what doesn’t get them indicted … and most

likely they route the vast majority of client orders to one or maybe two

banks / HFT’s, wherever the thieving is the greatest for the highest return … this

is the state of Turnkey’s CFD market offerings, and quite frankly none of them

are worth shit.

Then there’s FX, where doing a “180” simply cuz the volumes are much, much

higher and the markets tighter, the LP’s simply can’t get away with thieving on

the scale they get away with in CFD’s … CFD’s cost customers dollars, FX costs

customers pennies … now, nobody expects banks or HFT’s to provide a service

for free, and under circumstances that are usually normal for FX, even with

slightly higher VIX on some days, getting “clipped” a tenth or two on a fill isn’t

going to be the determining factor in whether or not the trade was profitable

… you can’t say the same in CFD’s, where the vast majority of the muggings,

robberies, & rapes of accounts take place … and don’t get me wrong, Turnkey

isn’t the only place where this is a very big problem, cuz there’s plenty of houses

where CFD’s are a complete rip off, and even worse than Turnkey … on the other

hand, you can’t generalize about the entire CFD space, cuz there are some decent

NO KYC brokerage houses that have pretty decent CFD’s … the Mrs. likes

“Simple FX’, where there’s NO KYC, no commissions, very fast latency on fills,

and generally is happy with the above average bid/offer spread conditions

… when the NYSE is “open”, the “Spoos” spread is 0.3 index points, the DOW30

is 2 index points, and the NDX100 is 0.7 index points … crude oil is 3 cents, gold

is right around $0.20 give or take a penny or two, and they have stock CFD’s as

well on the U.S. market’s most volatile stocks like Tesla [TSLA], Amazon [AMZN],

etc. … crypto here is a joke, so you wouldn’t come here to trade crypto, and FX is

a few tenths of a PIP higher across pairs versus Turnkey with commissions, so

if you were 100% an FX trader, this isn’t the place either, as Turnkey is about as

good as it gets in FX, all things considered … but for world “Stock Bellies”,

crude oil [Brent & WTI], & gold, I don’t think you can find much better, that’s

NO KYC, no commissions and from what I’ve seen very minimal slippage if any.

What I find amazing are two things … 1) the U.S. Dollar hasn’t collapsed [yet],

and 2) Turnkey can be sooooo “Hoover Dam” good, if not the very best, in FX,

and soooooo piss poor in CFD’s that the difference is a study in black & white

… what keeps the system afloat is the fact that all of the major central banks have

the CNTRL-P machine running 24/7/365, but again the FED is making noise right

now bucking the trend of the others … will it cave or will it let the “bubbles” pop?

… I don’t think we have long to wait to get the answer.

Directly below, the 20 Day Range MA of selected markets.

click on table to enlarge

Priscilla The Trading Gorilla [PTTG] continues to be sick with some kind of flu

virus … she’s getting better, but it’s a slow process … whether she’s back or

not, next week starts the results, so I’m giving her this week to get back to

trading … if she can’t make it, we’ll pick it up when she returns to good health.

Onto the week … outta here … “The future’s so bright I need sunglasses”!! 😎😎

… Onward & Upward!!

-vegas